The Night Bird, page 27
It ended now. Tonight.
He e-mailed her again. Another ping.
You’re the only one who can save her.
She knew she should alert Frost. She could get out of the car and scream for the police. End the ruse; get them out of the ruins. Her voice would bring them running. They could save her, but they couldn’t save Lucy Hagen. And it would start all over again with someone else. She wasn’t going to let that happen.
She finally sent an e-mail back.
I’m right here. You know where I am.
Frankie held her phone in her hand, and she waited for him to reply. The silence went on and on. No e-mail. Nothing. It was a slow torture, as if he wanted her to suffer in anticipation.
Finally, her phone vibrated. She sucked in her breath, realizing that he was making a video call this time. He wanted to see her, and he wanted her to see him, too. That was part of the game. She wished she could throw the phone out of the car into the rain, but she held it up in front of her face and steeled herself as she answered the call.
There he was.
The mask.
Everyone else had seen it before, but not her. Frost. Todd. Lucy. They’d described it to her and shown her pictures, but the reality was a thousand times worse. Close up. Filling the entire screen. The plastic was deathly white, drained of all color. Candy-red lips grinned at her, a huge grin, stretching from the point of the chin to the high false cheekbones. His teeth looked like gold railroad tracks. The eyeholes were rimmed in silver, and where the eyes should have been was the gleaming black mesh of an insect’s eyes. Dreadlocks dripped down the mask in braids of fake hair.
The mask spoke to her.
“Fran-kie . . . Fran-kie.”
She knew he could see her, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him see how terrified she was. She made her own face into a pale mask. Her lips curled with contempt. “Where’s Lucy?”
“Wanna see . . . wanna see?”
“Show me.”
Like a page turning, the camera reversed. Frankie couldn’t help herself. She cried out in anguish at what she saw. The screen blazed with whiteness, as if the luminous ivory paint on the walls could blind her. Everything was white—walls, floor, and ceiling. In the midst of it, she saw Lucy Hagen. Tears, like rain, streamed down the young woman’s cheeks. The huge whites of her eyes matched the walls. Frankie knew she was drugged. Hypnotized. So far into a trance that she stood on the surface of another planet. It was the look that her patients had when she was working with them to change their memories, but this was the dark side. This was everything she’d ever tried to do in life turned against her.
Lucy had both hands wrapped around the black handle of a knife. Its silvery blade was almost a foot long, its razor point facing downward. Her arms were outstretched from her body. Every muscle trembled. She stared into the camera, her glassy eyes helpless.
“Help me,” she called, with the whimper of a child. “Save me.”
Then she screamed, so loudly that Frankie jerked back in her seat.
“Stop me!”
Frankie could barely hold the phone in her hand. She wanted to run to Lucy and gather her up in her arms. “Let her go,” she shouted into the phone. “Let her go. Take me. I’m the one you want!”
The camera reversed, and the mask came back, grinning at her with its red lips. Behind the mask, the Night Bird laughed. His laughter bubbled up from his throat and filled the SUV, getting louder. She could still hear Lucy in the white room. “Save me, save me, save me.”
“Where are you?” Frankie yelled into the phone. “I’ll come to you. I’ll let you do whatever you want. Let Lucy go!”
He kept laughing.
The call ended, and the screen went black. The Night Bird was gone.
“No!” Frankie shouted. “Tell me where you are!”
She waited. Her breaths were short and fast. Her fists tightened the way they would around the man’s throat. “Come on, come on, come on,” she murmured, knowing he wasn’t done with her, waiting for the next e-mail.
Ping.
She whipped her fingers across the screen.
You have five minutes.
Frankie punched back her reply in capital letters.
WHERE ARE YOU?
The seconds ticked. One, two, three, four. She rolled down the window, and rain poured inside. Where did he want her to go? What did he want her to see? She leaned out and looked up and down the street. She was alone.
Ping.
Another e-mail.
Only you can save her.
“I know that!” she shouted out the window. “Don’t you think I know that? Tell me where you are!”
Her fingers trembled as she typed a message.
I will come to you. Please. I will do whatever you want.
One minute of her five minutes was gone. Frankie cried; sobs wracked her chest. That was what he wanted. To torture her. And this was how he did it. Not by laying hands on her body, not by feeding drugs into her brain. He made her sit in the truck, impotent and desperate. He let the time go by, until there was no time for her to stop what came next. To pry the knife out of Lucy’s hands.
Ping.
She read the e-mail through her tears.
Look up.
Frankie pushed her head out of the window of the SUV and craned her neck to stare at the cloud-layered sky. It was night. Lightning flashed. Silver curtains of rain descended.
“What am I supposed to see?” she shouted.
But then she saw it.
She was across the street from a four-story white stone building. It looked like a government palace airlifted out of Washington DC. Columns divided the rows of windows. A balcony jutted out from one window, as if Evita might stand there, waving to adoring crowds. But this building, like everything also around her, was abandoned. Dirt marred the white stone. The windows were covered over. Everything was dark.
No, she realized as she looked closer. Not everything.
Where she’d seen nothing before, now a pinpoint light blinked on the top floor. It flashed behind the center window, on, off, on, off. A message. That’s where he was.
That’s where she had to go.
She threw open the door of the car.
Frankie climbed out, slammed the door shut, and ran.
Frost climbed into the open window frame. He braced himself against the walls on either side and delivered a kick to the diagonal plank that was nailed across the space. The first kick splintered the wood, and the second dislodged it from the side of the building and sent it spiraling to the ground. Behind him, Jess shouted, but Frost simply took a step forward and jumped.
The ground didn’t look far from the second-floor window, but it felt far as he dropped. He picked up speed and landed on his feet with an impact that shuddered through his spine. One leg crumpled under him, and he collapsed to the ground, which was a rocky slope of dirt and weeds. He got up and half limped, half ran toward the locked gates.
Jess yelled from the window. “What the hell are you doing?”
Frost pointed at the white building on the far side of the street, where Francesca Stein was disappearing inside. “There!”
He reached the property gates, which were eight feet high but free of barbed wire. He dug his shoes into the mesh and climbed. His fingers slipped on the wet netting, and spasms shot up and down his legs. He reached the top, wobbled, and basically let his body fall to the street on the other side.
“Frankie!” he shouted, but she was already out of sight.
He dragged himself toward the building’s main door at the street corner. A block away, he heard police officers sprinting to catch up with him. He limped up the outside stairs to a boarded door, which flapped open and closed as the wind blew. He wrenched it open and saw elegant marble steps in front of him, making a spiral toward the upper floors. Concrete dust littered the stone. Picture frames hung askew on the walls.
Heels tapped over his head, climbing the stairs.
“Frankie!” he called again. “Stop!”
She stopped, but not because he’d called to her. She stopped because at that moment, a guttural scream filled the entire stairwell. It came from speakers; it came from everywhere. High above him, and right beside him, he heard a man’s wail, throaty and terrible, begging for mercy that never came. It began, cut off, and began again, and died away into the gasp of someone laboring to breathe. It was a scream he’d never heard in his life, but there was no mistaking what it was.
It was a scream of death.
45
Frankie heard the scream. She froze halfway between the second and third floors of the building. The agony of it made her cover her ears. She fell against the railing and couldn’t take another step. The sound pushed through to her brain, no matter how much she tried to keep it out. If you came to the end of the road and saw the devil standing in front of you, that would be the howl of despair baying from your throat.
She wanted to turn back, but a woman’s voice rose over the scream. It was Lucy. “No, no, make it stop!”
Frankie shook off her fear and bolted up the last few steps. She found herself in a long hallway, with closed doors stretching the length of the building. The noise came from everywhere; she didn’t know which door to choose. She tried the first one, and it was locked. They were all locked. She went from door to door, shouting Lucy’s name.
Halfway down the hall, she found an open door, and she burst inside.
Her heart stopped.
Whiteness overwhelmed her. What she’d seen on her phone didn’t compare to the dazzling shock of white above, below, and around her. She had to stop to adjust to the brightness. It made her want to shield her eyes, as if she were looking into the sun. White room. White lights. Every window covered in white.
The room was large, at least a hundred feet from end to end. The ceiling was low. Video projectors—all white—had been mounted in intervals around the entire room. The walls were screens; the ceiling was a screen; the floor was a screen. She realized in an instant that this was a room that could be turned into anything. Any scene out of the pit of your imagination. Any dream come to life. It was a room where all your deepest fears could come true.
There were three people in the torture chamber.
In the corner, twenty feet away from her, was Todd Ferris. He was alive. He sat on the floor, knees pulled up to his chest. He had his fingers laced together, his hands against his chin, as if he were praying. As she ran into the room, his head swiveled, and he stared directly at her, but he didn’t act as if he recognized her. His winsome face looked dazed. His eyes were wide, unblinking circles of disbelief. She thought he was drugged. Like Lucy.
Lucy Hagen stood in the center of the room. Her mouth hung open. Her breathing was loud, as if she couldn’t drag air into her lungs fast enough. Her legs were slightly apart, and Frankie could see them trembling. She had the pretty face that Frankie remembered, but the face didn’t even belong to Lucy anymore. She looked like someone else entirely. Someone who’d been thrown onto an island alone.
One of Lucy’s arms hung limply at her side. The other held the long-bladed knife. Her elbow was cocked, and Lucy clenched the black handle as if it were part of her body.
The blade of the knife wasn’t silver anymore.
It was soaked in blood.
Lucy stood over the body of a man. He was the third person in the room. He lay back, draped across a chaise that was an exact match for the one in Frankie’s office. This was her office, taken to a violent extreme. The man’s arms and legs sprawled off the chair; his fingers and shoes grazed the floor. The gruesome, grinning mask half covered his face.
It was Darren Newman. She recognized the wild, bright colors of his clothes. He wore a bright-yellow dress shirt, but the yellow was dyed crimson where he’d been stabbed multiple times. His chest heaved. Blood seeped from his body onto the white chair and onto the white floor, dotting it with red beads. He was on his last, gagging breaths. Bile spat from his lips. His skin grayed as oxygen fled.
The Night Bird was dead. He’d lost the last game, and yet the game went on.
“Lucy,” Frankie murmured. “It’s okay. I’m here. You’re safe.”
Lucy saw her, but she didn’t really see her. She stared down at Darren’s body with a crazed disbelief.
Frankie walked across the room, moving closer to her step by step. “There’s nothing to be afraid of now, Lucy. Put the knife down. Let me help you.”
“No,” Lucy whimpered. “No, please. Don’t make me.”
She got closer. And closer.
“Lucy, it’s Dr. Stein. You are Lucy Hagen. Do you remember? You’re okay. You went through a terrible thing, but now you’re okay.”
Lucy kept the knife poised in her hand. Then, slowly, horribly, she put it to her throat. Frankie walked faster, holding up her hands. They were only twenty feet apart now.
“Put it down, Lucy,” Frankie told her softly. “Just kneel down and lay the knife on the floor. Nothing will happen to you.”
Lucy sobbed inconsolably. “No, no, just go away. Don’t come any closer. I don’t want to do this.”
“I know you don’t, and you don’t have to.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
Frankie heard thunder on the stairs of the building. Voices shouted. Frost was almost here, and he wasn’t alone. In seconds, the police would storm into the room. They’d have guns. And Lucy still had the knife pressed against her trachea. She had it pressed so hard that Frankie could see blood seeping from her skin around the edge of the blade. If she pushed any more, she’d sever her own throat.
Calm. All Frankie could focus on was calmness. She wanted Lucy’s entire world to be calm.
She took another step. And another. She made her way around the far side of the chair where Darren’s body lay. She wanted to draw Lucy away from the horror at her feet, and as Frankie walked, Lucy turned. She followed every step that Frankie made. It was just the two of them now, confronting each other. Lucy held the knife. Frankie held her hands up.
They were ten feet apart.
“Lucy, it’s me. Do you recognize me? Do you remember me? I’m here to help you. I know you’re afraid, but believe me, it’s over. It’s done. No one will hurt you anymore.”
“Stay away from me.”
Lucy’s hand shook. She could barely hold the handle now. The knife twitched at her skin.
“Lucy, it’s Dr. Stein. Give me the knife. You don’t want to hurt yourself. I know you want everything to go away, but you don’t have to do this. It’s already over. You’re already safe. Take the knife away from your throat, okay? Just let your fingers loosen, and it will fall to the ground, and it won’t hurt you or anyone ever again. Okay? Listen to my voice, Lucy. Don’t pay attention to anything else. The only thing you hear is the sound of my voice.”
Lucy was hypnotized, but Frankie tried to take over, to break in, to snatch her away from the Night Bird. She held Lucy’s eyes and didn’t blink. She kept the same cadence in her words, as lulling as an ocean wave.
“My voice, Lucy. Listen to my voice.”
The thunder drew closer. Footsteps pounded outside the door. She heard Frost calling now, shouting from the hallway. He called Lucy’s name, but Lucy didn’t hear him. She was trapped in another world, and she couldn’t escape.
Frankie wanted to shout for them to stop, to stay away, to leave her alone, but she couldn’t break the connection with Lucy. She didn’t know what would happen when the police came in. She didn’t know what the chaos would do to the girl’s brain. The knife was still in her hand. It was just a small motion away from cutting her open.
“That’s all you have to do, Lucy. You don’t have to do anything else at all. Just listen to my voice.”
Frankie took another step. Just one step. And then the hell began.
She heard a metallic click below her as she triggered some kind of electronic switch under the floor tiles. Lucy heard it, too, and terror consumed her face, as if she knew what that click meant. What it would bring. What it would do to her. The Night Bird was dead, but he still controlled the game.
Hard, loud rock music filled the room. Frankie knew the song and knew it was a sick joke. She’d been teased about it all her life.
“Frankenstein.”
The entire room transformed around her. The cameras awakened automatically, and ultra-high-definition images swept the space. The white walls, white floor, and white ceiling mutated into a landscape so real that she felt as if she’d been lifted out of San Francisco and carried thousands of miles away. Cold air blew from hidden vents. The temperature dropped like a stone.
They were in the mountains, as high as God. Craggy pinnacles rose on every side toward a gray sky. Snow clung to furrows in the rock. Far below, hundreds of feet below, a glacier crawled between the hills, calving icebergs into a ribbon of sea-foam-green water. Between two peaks, a perilous footbridge sagged into the arms of the air, hanging on the thinnest of wires.
Lucy stood on that bridge, frozen with fear.
Frankie shouted. “Lucy, it’s not real.”
But to Lucy, it was real. She was there. On the bridge. Living her nightmare.
“You!” Lucy screamed, her voice rising over the music. She stared directly at Frankie and knew exactly who she was. She’d been waiting for Francesca Stein. She’d been programmed for this exact moment. “You did this to me!”
“Close your eyes, Lucy. Close your eyes. We’ll make it go away. Together.”
The Night Bird’s singsong voice chanted from overhead speakers. “Luuuucy . . . Luuuucy.”
